Don't worry, I have a "Dark Side" bike too, although I drew the line at having a metal (aluminum) frame. None of that carbon stuff for me. Raleigh Talus 29 Comp from a couple of model years back. The only major mods I've made are better tires (Specialized Captains) and Jones Bars. It really lets me take advantage of riding in places like Auburn, some of the best riding near Sacramento:
https://flic.kr/p/wPMqsu Part of the motivation for me was that as a professional mechanic in a bike market increasingly dominated by things like hydraulic discs, I felt it behooved me to be more familiar with these technologies. I've ridden full suspension bikes, and they hold little attraction for me. The certainly let you plow over rough lines and hold your speed better, but for me that feels like the textbook definition of risk compensation and I've already ended up in the ER once from mountain biking (ask Manny) so I'd rather not increase my risk. The hardtail feels like the perfect balance of making riding rough stuff comfortable, doable, and enjoyable, without coddling you and rewarding proper line selection and speed control. Although having ridden some fully rigid 29+ bikes I'd say that I could probably do nicely with one of those, or maybe just a Krampus fork and 29+ front wheel for this bike. On Tuesday, September 29, 2015 at 5:21:26 PM UTC-7, Bill Lindsay wrote: > > A couple months back I put 5 bikes up for sale, needing to sell 2. Turns > out I sold 3. I needed to raise funds and also clear garage space for my > new career as Team Mechanic for El Cerrito High School Mountain Bike > Racing. Go Gauchos! > > Anyhow, two bikes went directly to listers, and one went to a friend of > Manny's. So it's tangentially list-content to share what I spent the money > on. First I bought my son a used tuba and a new trombone, so he won't have > to shuttle instruments to and from school every day. Then I bought a > mountain bike. It is a Niner Air 9. > > > http://www.jensonusa.com/Mountain-Bikes/Niner-Air-9-Carbon-1-Star-Deore-Bike > > Yes, it's crabon fibre. It's got through axles, hydraulic disks and a > 100mm travel fork. I'm pretty excited to get my hands on it. My brother > in law is picking it up at Jenson and I'll get it this weekend. Now I will > have a contemporary hardtail race bike to keep me up to speed on the > newfangled componentry. Wish me luck! > > Bill Lindsay > El Cerrito, CA > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
